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VANCOUVER — I’ve been on holiday, watching with interest the furore sparked by my column suggesting other uses — a mix of market housing plus a huge range of other options — for Langara and possibly other city-owned golf courses.

Although I’ve been delighted by the interest the column generated, I’m disappointed by the quality of most responses.

The reaction of golfers who use city courses is understandable, though unconvincing. Of course they want themselves and a few tens of thousands of other citizens and visitors to continue to have low-cost access to property worth billions. But not one response that I’ve seen explains why their hobby deserves the support of hundreds of thousands who don’t golf and therefore have no access to some of the city’s most valuable land.

The argument that golf courses make a profit — in the $300,000 range for Langara — is laughable. If you think the city should stay in the golf business, tying up an asset worth $2 billion or so for a 0.015-per-cent annual return, then I’ve got some bridges I’d like to sell.

Much lamer, however, are those who dismiss the proposal by distorting it beyond recognition, then attacking their own distortion. “What next? Sell Stanley Park?” they gasp in the full knowledge that no one in their right mind would want to do that. (Stanley Park, by the way, is about three times the size of the city’s three golf courses, and their combined net revenue is less than a third of what the park makes from pay parking revenue alone.)

But my argument is that Vancouver’s parks — whether Stanley or Queen Elizabeth Park, or many others — are the opposites of golf courses. They’re open to the masses and well used for myriad community activities, not just the exclusive purview of a privileged few. They provide a home for a rich variety of specific-use facilities — swimming pools, play and picnic areas, sports fields, beaches, tennis courts, even pitch and putts. It’s true that each specific facility may, like a golf course, cater to only a small portion of the population, but collectively they cover most people’s interests and, unlike golf courses, each one ties up relatively little public land. They promote fitness and well-being for all. They’re home to events celebrating every facet of our community and, not incidentally, raise millions and millions for important causes.

More troubling than these shoot-from-the lip dismissals, however, are the reactions of at least three people who I’d expect to give the idea a fairer hearing.

Park board chairman Aaron Jasper continues to dig in on his initial knee-jerk “not on my watch” response. Now, in a story in Monday’s Vancouver Sun by my colleague Jeff Lee, former city planners Larry Beasley and Brent Toderian join the naysayers.

Frankly, I’d expect Jasper, of all people, to realize that these golf courses may be on public land, but they’re scarcely public facilities since most citizens can’t use them — ever. So, even if 20 per cent of the land were sold for housing, as my original column suggested, repurposing the other 80 per cent would add to, not subtract from, the recreational land base that’s useful and accessible to most Vancouverites.

I’d also expect Beasley — the widely acclaimed master of wheeling and dealing to gain civic amenities — and his successor, Toderian, to understand the vast array of possibilities that a judicious land sale would open up.

My original column estimated that selling 20 per cent of Langara golf course would net about $675 million. As Beasley and Toderian should well know, you can do a heck of a lot of amenity shopping with that kind of cash.

My column mentioned the two extremes on the continuum of what might be done with so much money. At one end, annual earnings on an investment that size could fund a five-per-cent property tax decrease. At the other, it would pay for 4,100 affordable homes.

And in between? That’s where, I hoped, the community conversation might turn.

For example, some or all the money from the sale of 10 prime hectares (or 24 acres) of Langara land fronting Cambie Street, where real estate prices are red hot, could buy much more land in less expensive parts of the city. Many less expensive areas could certainly use more parks.

Nor would the area around Cambie and 49th be ill-served by this. Residents, no longer limited to the dubious privilege of walking around the perimeter of a 50-hectare site that’s off-limits to anyone but golfers, could have an entire 40-hectare park — that’s almost as big as Queen Elizabeth Park — for every single one of them to enjoy.

Interestingly, Mayor Gregor Robertson is the one public figure who, so far at least, seems to get this. His initial reaction showed some caution about the idea, as it should, but also willingness to look at it further. I hope he continues to show leadership on this.

The greatest value of this land is in the possibilities it opens up. It’s foolish, I think, to dismiss all of them, or even most of them, before airing them fully and thinking them through.

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